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Comment by onetimemanytime | Hacker News Reader

$15 million....what's that, an olive in the salad of US military? Have USA buy it...

Could easily do it financially, the problem is you have to get the attention of someone in government that matters and prompt them to go to bat to convince numerous other people of the need to spend the money. Stray spending like that only happens as a pet cause that someone with influence champions, in doing so they burn a political marker (diverts funds from someone else's pet cause). Alternatively you have to get someone to put it into a future budget for one of the land management services, which can take years depending.

Might be far easier to get a rich person to fork over the $15m and then hand it over to the forest service, like so:

"The league plans to transfer the land to the US Forest Service in the next decade, which will make it part of the Giant Sequoia National Monument."

Where’s a Gates or a Zuckerberg when you need them?

Why does the world's wealthiest country have to rely on the largesse of a few wealthy individuals to protect its natural and cultural heritage? I think the Parks Department can handle this one.

There are already large Sequoia groves under the protection of the parks and other departments.

...And each one that remains counts in our survival at middle term. Should be easier and less expensive to protect than an equivalent area in Amazonian rainforest.

How many sequoias should the parks department own? All of them?

1000 year's old sequoias? as many as they can.

Yes, all of them should be protected by the US government so they cannot simply be sold to the highest bidder. Once these ancient trees are gone, they will never come back. The Parks Service seems to be able to keep these alive and in good shape for the benefit of all

Who do you think is responsible for funding most of the Parks Department (and the rest of government)?

It’s always going to be these people that that created the most wealth that are paying. It’s much better to have them pay for it directly than to have the government tax them and have the government pay. The former eliminates all the waste involved with paying bureaucrats to take the money as taxes and more bureaucrats to spend the money that was taken. I would be surprised if the government would have to tax at least $16 million to be able to spend $15 million but this grove of redwoods.

This sounds a lot like feudalism!

The Lord having a duty to his peasants to protect parts of the land and pay for its upkeep.

> The former eliminates all the waste involved with paying bureaucrats to take the money as taxes and more bureaucrats to spend the money that was taken.

Correct, the former eliminates all the waste involved in a functioning democracy.

You may be on to something. Like a casual carbon tax credit. Buy forested land in lieu of tax payments.

I think in practice both the government and private interests will end up paying for this. I predict they will successfully raise the $15m to buy the land, and transfer it to the park system. But then the park system will end up paying for maintenance forever. It seems like a pretty reasonable balance, to me.

The problem with expecting the park service to acquire all land that’s good for parks is that in the Sierras there really is a huge amount of land that would be amazing for parks. California has more nice parkland than anywhere else I’m aware of, and the government already struggles at times to maintain it all, so I wouldn’t expect them to necessarily be aggressively expanding.

because it's an oligarchy.

Remember that they would have to maintain it...

Left entirely alone, I think the trees maintain themselves rather well

No, they would have to be protected from poaching.

And cleared a bit to reduce fuel loading in case of fire.

Yes, we call them... national parks.

While I wouldn't have asked for hacker news comments to turn into this genre: this is an underrated comment.

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